American Airlines Jet With 64 Aboard Collides With Army Helicopter

A jet with 60 passengers and four crew members aboard collided Wednesday night with a US Army Blackhawk helicopter while landing at Ronald Reagan National Airport near Washington DC, prompting a large search-and-rescue operation in the nearby Potomac River.

American Airlines Flight 5342 was on final approach when the collision occurred.

Hundreds of rescuers are searching the frigid waters of the Potomac River for any survivors of the plane crash.

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Images showed boats around a partly submerged wing and what appeared to be the mangled wreckage of the plane’s fuselage.

Helicopters flew overhead with powerful search lights scanning the murky waters.

Emergency vehicles lit up the banks of the Potomac in a long line of blinking red lights.

The water temperature was just above freezing.

The crash closed the airport, which is expected to reopen by 11 a.m., this morning.

On Thursday morning, the airport's website was reporting an "aircraft incident," adding that flights were halted, but the terminals were open.

Flight 5342 originated out of Wichita, Kansas, with 60 passengers and four crew members. There were three US Army personnel aboard the Blackhawk, which was on a training mission. That totals 76 souls on board between the two aircraft.

Fourteen members of the U.S. Figure Skating team were reportedly on the flight.

U.S. Figure Skating’s communication director Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs confirms that athletes, coaches and families were onboard AA Flight 5342, who were returning from a development camp held after the national U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Wichita.

“We are devastated by this unspeakable tragedy and hold the victims’ families closely in our hearts,” the organization said.

Sen. Jerry Moran, a Republican from Kansas, said the plane that crashed was flying a route from Wichita to Washington that began about a year ago.

“I know that flight,” he said. “I’ve flown it several times myself.”

Moran said he expected that many people in Wichita would know people who were on the flight.

“This is a very personal circumstance,” he said.

Less than 30 seconds before the collision, air traffic recordings show controllers asking the helicopter if it has the plane in sight and instructing it to pass behind the landing aircraft.

A crewmember on the helicopter replies that “the aircraft is in sight” and requests “visual separation” with the incoming plane, allowing it to fly closer than may otherwise be allowed if the pilots didn’t see the plane.

The controllers approved the request.

About 20 seconds later, a commotion is heard on the audio, and seconds after that, controllers begin diverting aircraft away from the disaster scene.

No survivors were found in the wreckage.

The crash is likely to be the worst U.S. aviation disaster in almost a quarter century, officials said Thursday.

The aircraft that collided Wednesday over the Potomac River near Washington D.C. was a Bombardier CRJ-701 twin-engine plane carrying 64 people and a UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter.

The crew of the Blackhawk were not new to the unit or the congested flying that occurs daily around Washington, D.C., said Jonathan Koziol, chief of staff for Army aviation.

“Both pilots had flown this specific route before, at night. This wasn’t something new to either one of them,” Koziol said. “Even the crew chief in the back has been in the unit for a very long time, very familiar with the area, very familiar with the routing structure.”

The maximum altitude where the Blackhawk was at the time of the crash — along a published corridor called Route 4 — was 200 feet above ground, Koziol said. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said at the White House on Thursday that elevation seemed to be a factor in the crash.

Koziol said investigators need to analyze the flight data before making any conclusions as to altitude.

The helicopter’s instructor pilot, who was serving as pilot-in-command, had about 1,000 flight hours.

That’s according to Jonathan Koziol, chief of staff for Army aviation. The instructor pilot was evaluating the second pilot — who was also qualified as a pilot in command — for that night training flight and the pilot who was being evaluated had about 500 flight hours, Koziol said.

Both black boxes from the downed Bombardier were recovered on Thursday.

Fatal crashes of commercial aircraft in the U.S. have become a rarity. The deadliest recent crash took place on Feb. 12, 2009 near Buffalo, New York.

That incident saw a Colgan Air Bombardier DHC-8 propeller plane crashing into a house, killing everyone aboard including 45 passengers, two pilots and two flight attendants. Another person on the ground also died, bringing the total death toll to 50.

In August 2006, a Comair aircraft crashed when taking off in Lexington, Kentucky, after it left from the wrong runway and ran off the end. Two crew members and 47 passengers were killed.

And in November 2001, an American Airlines flight crashed into a residential area of Belle Harbor, New York just after take off. All 260 people aboard the plane were killed.